


like they were blooming

by oculata



Series: the beginning of forever [14]
Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: 10x10, Canon Compliant, Fluff and Angst, Gap Filler, M/M, Morning Cuddles, Season/Series 10, post engagement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-12
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 08:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22224004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oculata/pseuds/oculata
Summary: Ian and Mickey are engaged.REQUEST:"Idk if you take requests but after seeing Ian cuddled with that pillow thinking it was Mickey I need a fic about how they're both such cuddlers."(10x10 fill-in fic)
Relationships: Ian Gallagher/Mickey Milkovich
Series: the beginning of forever [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1524932
Comments: 16
Kudos: 292





	like they were blooming

**Author's Note:**

> shameless is a bad show, and i'm upset. i guess this is more of a partial fill-in. if you have more requests for what i can fill-in for this episode, send them to my [Curious Cat](https://curiouscat.me/clennam).
> 
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/_clennam)

If Ian were being honest, he didn’t quite understand the fascination the general public had with cuddling. In fact, he found the whole ordeal rather miserable—two ovenlike bodies pressed up against each other, one arm clumsily tossed around the other person while the other limb was awkwardly squished between them, simultaneously threatening to either be drowned in sweat or be dislocated. Additionally, the intimacy that came with it was something he never felt like quite fit with most of the relationships which necessitated such an act. For Ian, it was this vulnerable, personal contact that essentially existed to comfort or deescalate the feelings that came with intense situations. It was an act that just never quite felt like it fit.

With Mickey, though, things were different; things made sense. He understood, wanted, and even initiated that closeness with him. He wanted to have Mickey wrapped in his arms, to press his nose into the crook of Mickey’s neck or into his hair and inhale his scent. He wanted to cradle Mickey’s whole existence and have the man keep him tethered to the earth. There was just something about how Mickey’s body fit against his and how comfortably warm he was. He longed for the moments where it was only the two of them, laying in bed as they were captured by the moonlight that was streamed in through the window—where the air felt softer and skin looked far more supple than usual, and Ian could move his hand over Mickey and feel how his sleeping body would still burn to life under his touch.

Everything that he hated about cuddling with anyone else never entered his mind when he was holding Mickey and allowing everything about the man to consume him. Just a few nights of cuddling with Mickey every night—drifting off to sleep with his love in his arms—was enough to make Ian forget all his previous apprehensions about cuddling. Suddenly, it was all he wanted to do, especially since they had their own room and their own bed once again. He wanted to get as close to cuddling as he could as often as possible, which meant constantly having an arm wrapped around Mickey’s shoulder and hand holding when that wasn’t an option, waiting for night to come so they could huddle under the sheets and slide into each other’s bodies as the comfort they brought to each other lulled them to sleep.

Ian hadn’t even realized how integral to his happiness and tranquility that sort of contact had become. The last thing he expected to happen after he and Mickey broke up was for him to have problems sleeping because of how empty and cold their bed felt. He would toss and turn for hours, but nothing he tried worked—if he kept himself confined to his side of the bed, the damn mattress would feel like it was becoming continentally large, and if he sprawled out over its entirety, he would feel guilty that he was taking up the space that was Mickey’s. He would also get an inkling of a fear that if he took over the whole bed, Mickey might never come back, and he didn’t want that to be a possibility in any timeline.

On the third night of the two of them being separated, Ian found himself once again sleepless in the early hours of the morning when a little hit of Mickey’s scent somehow wafted over to him. It had happened a couple of times before, but Ian had been far too in his own head to even begin to look for the scent’s origin, opting to put it down to something psychosomatic than actually tangible. But, with the silence of night and nothing to drop him into sleep, Ian decided to move around the bed in search of the smell. He didn’t have to go far or long in his search, though, because once his nose hit Mickey’s pillow, everything made sense. Mickey’s pillow had been laying on his side completely untouched for a few days, so of course it still smelled like him. Against his better judgement telling Ian to ration its scent, he couldn’t help himself—he scooped the pillow into his arms and immediately got lost in how it made him feel. It wasn’t exactly how Mickey’s physical presence made him feel, but it filled up his heart and chest comfortably enough to the point where he finally felt his mind slowly drifting away from reality.

For just a few seconds every morning, when the sleep still clouded his mind and the heat from the covers felt blissful, Ian would wake up and feel like he actually had Mickey in his arms again.

* * *

Despite the hurt and anger that permeated Mickey’s mental state for a couple days, there was still something sitting under it all that was soft, gentle, and pleading to be held. He felt lonely and empty—like he was missing something with the same importance as a limb. He hated the moments where there wasn’t anything to distract him from his emotions because all he could do was wallow in his feelings and wait for something to come up again. He hated being in his head because it was a series of memories—both wonderful and painful—being projected onto the back wall of his skull, cycling him through feelings of longing and sadness and anger. He was just feeling so fucking much and all at once. He was tired of it and wanted everything to be normal again.

Mickey snuck back into the Gallagher house a few times to grab some clothing and different shoes, and on one such occasion, when he was sure Ian would be out of the house for a while, he decided to linger for longer than usual. He grabbed a change of underwear, shirt, and pants, but then he decided to sit down on the bed and take in his surroundings. The room looked mostly the same as when he left a few days prior, which was a given considering that such a small amount of time had passed, but it also seemed like Ian was making a deliberate effort to keep things untouched—the random assortment of items, down to Mickey’s name tag from Old Army, lay undisturbed on the nightstand, and his slippers were nearly tucked in the corner where he had toed them off. It was all the same, frozen in a time when things were still okay.

He scanned the area around himself, seeing a pair of Ian’s stupidly big white socks scattered like deflated worms at his feet, and he felt himself smile. He looked around some more before his eyes settled on one of Ian’s shirts on the bed, nearly lost in the sea of blankets and sheets. Mickey picked it out and recognized it as one of the few shirts that Ian liked to wear to sleep. He put it up to his nose and was instantly flooded with the comfort and serenity that he’d been craving. He got lost in the moment and the feeling of it all, his need for Ian becoming more acute than usual. He wasn’t sure how long he sat there smelling the shirt, but when he finally regrounded himself in reality, he knew it had been too long. He tossed his own clothes over one shoulder and Ian’s shirt over the other and slithered out of the house.

He didn’t know what he was going to do with the shirt. It was his favorite of Ian’s because of how the fabric tightened across his chest, but Mickey expected to have a plan for it once he left the Gallagher house. However, such a plan never came. He thought rage would take over again, which would lead him to maybe throw it into a dumpster as some sort of act of finality, but nothing came. Instead, he felt this overwhelming sense of emptiness with a touch of grief, as if Ian’s shirt was the only thread left linking them together. He knew that wasn’t the truth, but something in his mind kept chipping at him and wearing him down until it was all he could think about. At some point, his hand migrated onto the shirt. Mickey grabbed onto it so hard that his knuckles turned white. Letting go felt like the wrong thing to do.

That night, though he wasn’t entirely sure how it ended up in his clutches, he fell asleep cradling the fabric, his body almost completely tucked around it. He rubbed his thumb over the cloth, logically knowing it felt nothing like Ian’s skin but still trying to convince himself it did. He kept stroking and smelling, hoping that the sensory adaptation would be slower than usual so he could find enough comfort in that little piece of Ian so he could drift off into his dreams where everything was much better and brighter—where he and Ian still woke up together, laughed about their silly nightmares, and comforted each other before going out for breakfast to talk some more.

* * *

He swore he could see the whole world in Mickey’s face.

It was the morning after their official engagement, and sunlight was pouring into their bedroom through a crack in the curtains. They’d woken up facing each other because they’d talked until the pink glow of the sun was rising above the horizon, with their hands laid atop one another and their legs tangled together, apparently eager to make up for the physical closeness they had missed out on. 

Ian woke up only a few minutes before his fiancé, which afforded him the time to admire the beauty and wonder that was the sleeping man before him. Ian was always aware of how beautiful Mickey was, but after not having his face to wake up to—to see first thing in the morning before the chaos of the day began—he was even more conscious of how breathtaking Mickey was. He loved how his cheek pressed against the pillow, making his lips look more pillowy than usual, and how utterly peaceful he looked with his eyes closed and mind at ease.

The sun moved as Mickey’s eyes fluttered open, and the stripe of light slicing through the room was now cutting through their upper arms. As their sleepy gazes met, a smile tugged at the corners of Mickey’s lips. Ian could only mirror the grin with a great intensity as he interlocked their fingers and moved their hands out of the covers, directly in the light’s path. The sunshine reflected off the brushed white gold bands with a fuzzy beam that went right into Mickey’s eyes.

“Ah fuck,” Mickey grunted as he reached his other hand up and shielded his eyes.

Ian giggled, lifted himself up, and braced his elbow on the mattress so his body was obscuring the peering sunlight. Mickey’s smile grew, and he dropped his hand, folding it against his chest.

“That looks good on you,” Ian commented, nodding towards the ring on Mickey’s finger.

“Don’t it?” Mickey said, his voice all gravelly as he looked down momentarily to admire the jewelry adorning him. “Yours doesn’t look half bad either.”

Ian gave him a breathy laugh. “Yeah. I was looking at them for a while, and something about the silver-looking thing it’s got going on looks so much better than yellow gold to me.”

“Yeah, the yellow gold looked like shit on me anyway,” Mickey said, rotating his hand a little to see it from various angles. Though Mickey seemed to barely process the comment, Ian froze for a second as the memories of that wedding day flashed in his mind along with all the hurt and pain that came with it. He leaned down to their connected hands and kissed the knuckle right above where the ring sat.

“Think this fits more,” Mickey expanded in a softer voice, still looking at the ring. He hooked a leg around Ian’s calf tightly.

“Personally, I think you look really nice with a ring on your finger,” Ian said with some humor in his voice as he began rubbing his thumb along the side of Mickey’s forefinger.

Mickey chuckled and gave Ian’s hand a squeeze. “Think so, too.”

Mickey’s eyes peered around the sunshine illuminated wispy hairs sticking out from Ian’s head.

“What time ‘s it?” he asked as he tried to make his own guess by the color of the light.

“Dunno, but we were up pretty late.”

Mickey smiled again, front teeth appearing in between his parted lips. “We were. ‘M still pretty tired. Got engaged or some shit, so big night.”

“Pretty crazy because I got engaged, too,” Ian replied.

“Oh yeah?” Mickey challenged with a taunting raise of his brows. “What’s he like?”

“He’s…” Ian began, trailing off as he got lost in the curves of Mickey’s face for the millionth time before continuing, “really beautiful. And he does a lot for me.”

Mickey felt a hot flush race to his cheeks and nose. He partially hid his face in the pillow, a little embarrassed by how much the comment affected him.

“Pretty fuckin’ corny, man.”

“Yeah,” Ian sighed happily.

Mickey felt the flush trickle over to his ears and then down his neck. He quickly squirmed closer to Ian’s body and buried his face into his fiancé’s neck, suffocating their adorned hands in between their chests.

“Wake me up in the few hours,” Mickey mumbled into Ian’s skin.

Ian sunk his chin into Mickey’s hair and let his scent float up to him. “Will do.”

For the first time in days, both Ian and Mickey slept well, and both of them knew exactly why that was.


End file.
